Nostromo - A Tale of the Seaboard.pdf - Planet eBook

ed Englishmen, but all born in the country. His unclewent into politics, was the last Provincial President of Sulaco,and got shot after a battle. His father was a prominentbusiness man in Sta. Marta, tried to keep clear of their politics,and died ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that’syour Costaguana in a nutshell.’Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned as tohis motives, even by his intimates. The outside world was atliberty to wonder respectfully at the hidden meaning of hisactions. He was so great a man that his lavish patronage ofthe ‘purer forms of Christianity’ (which in its naive form ofchurch-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon byhis fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humblespirit. But in his own circles of the financial world thetaking up of such a thing as the San Tome mine was regardedwith respect, indeed, but rather as a subject for discreetjocularity. It was a great man’s caprice. In the great Holroydbuilding (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocksof stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by theradiation of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departmentsexchanged humorous glances, which meant that theywere not let into the secrets of the San Tome business. TheCostaguana mail (it was never large—one fairly heavy envelope)was taken unopened straight into the great man’sroom, and no instructions dealing with it had ever beenissued thence. The office whispered that he answered personally—andnot by dictation either, but actually writingin his own hand, with pen and ink, and, it was to be supposed,taking a copy in his own private press copy-book,